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This chapter begins by outlining some of the international evidence demonstrating strong, and rising, geographical inequalities in health on a range of spatial scales. It moves on to argue that a geographicalapproach to understanding health inequalities is likely to be productive by helping to reveal underlying societal, political, and environmental processes. The chapter argues that there are at least three nascent and interrelated geographical frames that currently offer promise in understanding health inequalities. First, ‘Ecological Public Health’, which draws attention to the complex interactions between the environment and health inequalities. Second, the potential to combine historical data sources with place-based measures may aid efforts to understand how environmental factors affect health inequalities over time. Finally, the authors cautiously welcome the comparatively new idea that aspects of social and physical environments might play a part in reducing health inequalities by disrupting the usual conversion of socioeconomic adversity to poor health.

This chapter responds to the collective case made in Chapters 1–8 for reconceptualizing food policy around ecological public health. It proposes that food policy gains renewed clarity of purpose if it adopts the perspective of ecological public health but that structural challenges are awesome. The themes introduced in this present chapter are woven throughout.

This chapter explores how and why the food system has the shape it does, in order to assess whether and how the various food sectors are rising to the ecological public health challenge; and if not, how to encourage or make them do so. For decades, food producers have been locked into demands to increase output and to produce whatever they do more cheaply. Now, from health, environmental and societal interests, different urgent messages emanate, but can food businesses engage? Some argue that they can and must, which others claim that they cannot and are locked-in.

This chapter presents the results of discussions based on research conducted between 2006 and 2018. It explores the makings, workings, and effects of various sciences and technologies. It focuses on an array of applied health and environmental knowledges and innovations being developed to solve some of the gravest problems of human and ecological health facing China today. The kinds of cutting-edge basic sciences that are being energetically promoted by the state and private entrepreneurs that remain a subject for future anthropological research. The chapter also makes two major intellectual interventions. First, under the rubric “governing through science,” the governance/governmentality approach to the study of Chinese science and technology is extended. Second, the analysis is deepened by adding the insights of science and technology studies.

This introductory chapter examines the relationship between contested illnesses and environmental health. Recent contested illness struggles have moved into the realms of environmental and ecological health, as mounting scientific evidence has linked environmental and human well-being. Disturbing trends in human health statistics, such as declining sperm counts, rising rates of fertility problems in young women, and increasing rates of breast, testicular, and prostate cancers suggest environmental causes. The prevalence of asthma and certain neurological problems in children also appear to be on the rise. Although environmental links to human disease remain strongly contested, scientific evidence suggests that increasing and pervasive chemical exposure where people live, work, and play may partially explain these trends.

Ecofeminism emerged in the late 20th century as a major school of philosophical and theological thought and social analysis. Ecofeminism sees an interconnection between the domination of women and the domination of nature. This interconnection is typically made on two levels: ideological-cultural and socioeconomic. This chapter surveys several ecofeminist perspectives that are emerging from a number of religious and cultural contexts—those of Vandana Shiva from India, Ivone Gebara from Brazil, and Carolyn Merchant, a North American historian of science. It concludes with some questions about the utility of this effort to interconnect the domination of women and of nature, social justice, and ecological health.

Escalating human demands for fresh water are jeopardising the intrinsic biodiversity values, ecological health, and vital ecosystem services of the rivers, wetlands, and estuaries upon which millions of humans depend for water, food, and secure housing, as well as for quality of life, health, and prosperity. Climate change exacerbates these pressures by affecting the global water cycle, freshwater availability, and the ecological health of aquatic ecosystems. Restoration of biodiversity, ecosystem function, and resiliency is a global imperative for water managers, scientists, and civil society. This chapter introduces the main argument of the book, which is that to sustain freshwater and estuarine ecosystems the natural volumes and variability patterns of standing and flowing water must be maintained through provision of “environmental flows.”

This chapter discusses how we fail to learn from past mistakes when we ignore complex relationships among various species, in this case interactions between grazing sheep, coyotes, and rabbits. It focuses on rabbit drives, which are used to kill these animals in mass, because in Wyoming and Idaho they are considered predators or varmints. It adopts a human-centric approach and asks how rabbit drives affect our human economies or societal values. It argues that killing rabbits might actually increase coyotes' predation on sheep. There are also unintended consequences that shift ecological relationships in a given area that might negatively affect human health.